Thread by @kirstie_j

I’m so so so delighted that this piece: #bropenscience is Broken Science is published. I am so proud of it.

Here’s a little thread about how @o_guest and I wrote the article. (Spoiler: what you’re reading is the third complete restructure) 🌺🌸

https://twitter.com/psychmag/status/1315937857303871489

Last year @abrookmanbyrne, deputy editor @psychmag, reached out to @o_guest to ask her if she was interested in writing about the history of the wonderful #bropenscience pun that Olivia had created back in 2017.

https://twitter.com/o_guest/status/871675631062458368

Olivia gave it a first pass but writing an article about the genesis of a pun on Twitter felt.... thin. And a bit petty.

It’s something that folks ask for a lot, but it was hard to capture the irreverence of #bropenscience AND the huge power dynamics it draws attention to.

I offered to give the #bropenscience article a go. I’ve been so frustrated with bro culture in #OpenScience for many years - as my dear friends and colleagues know from tearful, angry phone rants after I’ve felt undermined and dismissed in online and IRL spaces.

Side note - THANK YOU TO THOSE FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES AAAAAAAAH - I don’t think they really know how much of my current career direction is due to them reminding me that 1) I can put some of the battles down, and 2) I can step back when I need to. #bropenscience

I thought about the content for a long time, procrastinated on actually starting and then one weekend - actually while my boyfriend was running his first 50 mile race 😱 - I sat down to write a first draft. #bropenscience

https://twitter.com/kirstie_j/status/1172793708741373953

I made HUGE progress that day. I didn’t have a full draft for a few more weeks to share with @o_guest but I did eventually. She asked for a zoom call to discuss (never a great sign 😉) #bropenscience

In that call - the first time that I had ever even seen @o_guest (we’ve been twitter friends for years but still not ever met) - we discussed what the purpose of the piece was, and what we wanted to achieve. #bropenscience

I’m so grateful to @o_guest for that conversation. We realised together that I’d written that first draft for the bros. Everything I included was designed to try to convince the people who had always denied that there was a problem. #bropenscience

I’d gone back to the civil rights movement, women’s suffrage (bread 🍞 & roses 🌹), disability rights and intersectionality. It was.... a lot to link back to a twitter hashtag #bropenscience

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and…

It was also kinda outside of my lane. I’m white, cis, English speaking and have had a privileged education. The article had tonnes of citations to descriptions of #StructuralOppression.... but it wasn’t broadly accessible. I was focusing my energy on the #bros. #bropenscience

Olivia asked: who did I want to benefit from the article?

My answer: Me of my phd & postdoc years. Where I felt like I knew nothing, was failing at everything, that there were these clear gateways that you had to pass through to be a programmer / open scientist.

#bropenscience

I want people like me of the past to feel seen. To feel welcome. To feel less alone.

And that’s when we created this draft of the paper. I am so delighted with it.

#bropenscience

I might go through a bit of the content in another thread, and I certainly need to tag all the folks who gave us feedback on this draft. But I also have to get to work.

tl;dr THANK YOU @o_guest

Thank you for working with me to find my voice in this paper. #bropenscience

Thank you too - OMFG thank you @o_guest - for making me laugh and for all the puns.

#broblems
#broposed solutions
#brolleagues

😂😂😂

#bropenscience

You probably already follow @o_guest. If you don’t, click that big ol’ button now.

But - more importantly - follow the folks she RTs and promotes. She a fantastic pathway to broadening your (and my) academic network to find those voices who aren’t usually heard. #bropenscience